If there
are IEDs on Trump’s road to reelection, they may be found in the Middle and
Near East, land of the forever wars, and North Korea. Not infrequently, foreign
policy has proven decisive in presidential years.
“It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,”
Yogi Berra reminded us.
But
on “The McLaughlin Group,” the
TV talk show on which this writer has appeared for four decades, predictions
are as mandated as was taking Latin in Jesuit high schools in the 1950s.
Looking
to 2020, this writer predicted that Donald Trump’s great domestic challenge
would be to keep the economy firing on all cylinders. His great foreign policy
challenge? Avoiding war.
When
one looks at the numbers — unemployment at or below 4% for two years, an
expansion in its 11th year, the stock market regularly hitting all-time highs —
Trump enters his reelection year with a fistful of aces. One has to go back
half a century to find numbers like these.
Moreover,
the opposition shaping up to bring him down seems, to put it charitably, not up
to the task.
Joe
Biden, 77, with 45 years in electoral politics, has lost more than a step or
two and his most memorable Senate vote was in support of George W. Bush’s
decision to take us to war in Iraq, the greatest blunder in U.S. diplomatic
history.
Biden’s
challengers are a cantankerous 78-year-old democratic socialist who just had a
heart attack and a 37-year-old mayor of a small town in Indiana who claims that
his same-sex marriage is blessed by the Bible.
Tom
Steyer and Mike Bloomberg are white male billionaires who are dumping scores of
millions into TV ads to buy the nomination of a party that professes to stand
on principle against white male privilege, wealth inequality and the noxious
effects of big money in politics.
While
Trump is facing an impeachment trial, an acquittal by a Mitch McConnell-run
Republican Senate seems a pretty good bet.
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And
the coming report of U.S. Attorney John Durham into the origins of the
Russiagate probe is expected to find political bias, if not conspiracy, at its
root. Trump could emerge from the Mueller Report, Horowitz Report and Durham
Report as what his allies claim him to be — the victim of a “deep state”
conspiracy to fix the election of 2016.
If
there are IEDs on Trump’s road to reelection, they may be found in the Middle
and Near East, land of the forever wars, and North Korea.
Not
infrequently, foreign policy has proven decisive in presidential years.
The
Korean War contributed to Harry Truman’s defeat in the New Hampshire primary
and his 1952 decision not to run again. When General Eisenhower, architect of
the Normandy invasion, declared, “I shall go to Korea,” his rival Adlai
Stevenson was toast.
Lyndon
Johnson saw his party shattered and chances vanish with the Tet Offensive of
1968, Eugene McCarthy’s moral victory in New Hampshire, and antiwar candidate
Bobby Kennedy’s entry into the race.
Jimmy
Carter’s feckless response to the seizure of U.S. hostages in Iran consumed the
last year of his presidency and contributed to his rout by Ronald Reagan.
The
critical foreign theaters where Trump could face problems with his presidential
re-election include Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
As
of Dec. 30, Kim Jong Un’s “Christmas gift” to Trump had not been delivered. Yet
it is unlikely Kim will let many weeks pass without making good on his warnings
and threats. And though difficult to believe he would start a war, it is also
difficult to see how he continues to tolerate sanctions for another year
without upgrading and rattling his nuclear arsenal.
Trump
is eager to make good on his promises and remove many of the 14,000 U.S. troops
in Afghanistan before Election Day. Yet such a move is not without risks. Given
the strength of the Taliban, the casualties they are able to inflict, the
inability of the Afghan army to hold territory, and the constant atrocities in
the capital city of Kabul, a Saigon ’75 end to the Afghan war is not outside
the realm of the possible.
Nor
is a shooting war with Iran that rivets the nation’s attention.
Yesterday,
U.S. F-15s, in five attacks, hit munitions depots and a command center of the
Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia in Syria and Iraq, a retaliatory raid for
a rocket attack on a U.S. training camp that killed an American contractor and
wounded four U.S. soldiers.
“For
those who ask about the response,” warns a Kataib Hezbollah spokesman, “it will
be the size of our faith.” One has to expect Iran and its militia in Iraq to
respond in kind.
They
have a track record. During 2019, with its economy choked by U.S. sanctions,
Iran and its allies sabotaged oil tankers in the Gulf, shot down a $130 million
U.S. Predator drone, and shut down with missiles and drones half of Saudi
Arabia’s oil production.
In
former times, a confrontation or shooting war often benefitted the incumbent,
as there was almost always a rallying to the flag. Those days are gone. This
generation has had its fill of wars.
